The Car that Wouldn't Die

I acquired my first car in the form of a sixteenth birthday gift, but since I still did not have my license, I sold it to my adopted brother. The car I have always considered my proverbial "first car" was another vehicle that I received after a series of mishaps a little over a year or so later. In my senior year, my mother's car, a 1980 Monte Carlo, broke down. It's engine needing to be replaced, it was parked in the yard indefinitely. That very same year, a friend of my parents had been let go from his job at IBM and decided to return to Detroit to look for work. The extremely high class home in which he had lived was placed on the market around the same time he wrecked his "junk car", a 1985 Monte Carlo. This wrecked heap did not look good in the yard of a home worth as much as his and therefore was an object of obvious distaste to those who came to see it. He decided to sell the car to my mother for $150. This was a wonderful deal considering it had a good engine that would fit the car she had sitting idle and unused in the yard.

I was delighted to hear that she had purchased it for me and that my father had agreed to combine her old broken down '80 Monte with the recently paid for '85 to make one running, non-wrecked, vehicle. I had not seen Ron's car since he had wrecked it but I had ridden in it in the past and remembered two basic things about it; it had a decent interior and it was a maroon color. My mother's old car, on the other hand, was a horribly unattractive snot color that I had always hated, so when my father asked which body I wanted to use, I picked the wrecked vehicle. When I finally got the chance to view the car, I saw that the front clip was pretty badly damaged and the windshield was cracked in a spider web pattern that bulged out where Ron's head had obviously hit it during the accident. My father took the front clip from the old snot yellow car that had been my moms and placed it on the '85 Monte. Then he spray-painted the whole front clip of the car with touch up paint. It wasn't the best job and the hood wouldn't close all the way since the frame of the car was still slightly bent. In the months that followed, a friend of the family paid to have the frame pulled out and the windshield replaced as a graduation gift. That summer I turned eighteen and took the state drivers test in my car.

After about a year of wear and tear, on the already eleven-year-old vehicle, it was pretty rough indeed. The front clip had started to show odd streaks of color that were especially obvious in the sunlight and the rest of the car, which had been maroon originally, had since faded to a dull brownish color. The headliner had fallen down and my sister and I had, ever so artfully, tacked it back up using gold thumbtacks. My rearview mirror, having fallen from it's appointed spot, now rested in the passenger's side floorboard along with the trash from various fast food restaurants. The tailpipe, which I had wired up as a result of horrible lightning like sparks coming from the back of the car, had suddenly started to drag again, and in doing so, had earned itself a new home inside the trunk rather than underneath it. The power steering and a couple of other belts had started an unbearable squealing, forcing me to turn the radio up to ear piercing levels. This would have been a wonderful solution but the quarter that was placed in the spot where the volume control knob should have been kept falling out every time it was touched. And, the tread bare tires were so smooth that if I rounded a curve too fast the entire car would slide sideways on the road as if I had hit an oil slick. This caused my passengers to cling to the faded interior while their screams were drowned out by the extra noise of the clanging change in the glove box.

To make matters worse, shortly after my first road trip as a legal adult, the transmission started going out. So there I would be; trying slowly to get up a hill, misplaced exhaust choking into the heat of a car whose air conditioner had long since died, the sound of horns coming from cars behind me, all but drowned out by the shrieking of belts and the loud fuzzy noise of the radio. So I purchased a, new to me, transmission from a friend's step father who had it laying carelessly uncovered in behind trailer. The "new" tranny was a three-speed causing it to have to be interestingly rigged in order work on my formerly four-speed car. The result of which, was me having to start the car and then count down the gears to know what gear I was actually in; one...park, two...reverse, three...neutral, four...drive.

I drove that old Monte for a few years before buying a newer car. My purchase was a '97 Monte Carlo Z34 complete with ground effects, sunroof, leather interior, CD player, and tinted windows. Funny, with all those features I still missed the old Monte. I missed it despite the fumes, the faded maroon paint, the headliner that resembled the night sky with thumbtacks for stars, and the sound of enough change in the glove box that I once paid the entire electric bill. I had some of my best memories in that car, driving around with my flannel shirt in the seat beside me, my heavy combat boot clad foot bearing down on the gas peddle while listening to Layne Staley of Alice in Chains screaming, "I am the man in the box..." through static filled speakers.

Thinking back on it now, maybe I didn't love that car despite all its misgivings, but rather, because of them. My car was like me...Damaged! Besides that, it kept me moving forward and one thing I was as sure of then as I am now is that no matter what I have to keep moving forward.